


Blood

by janboy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Hallucinations, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 22:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20749568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janboy/pseuds/janboy
Summary: A starving Vampire deals with the cost of his morality.





	Blood

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of my original character's story from a previous work. Read the first part here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17946824

_Stop._

_Stop rocking._

_Stop._

Arno dug his fingers into the rotten wood beneath him. Elongated nails pierced into the soft boards and Arno held himself still with the wood as an anchor. Now that he was still, the sound of creaking and his shifting body, back and forward, ceased. There was only the weak inhales and exhales from the doe on the ground some feet ahead of him.

Blood flowed freely from the doe's flank. Claw marks ran across its neck in four deep gashes. On its side, a criss-cross of cuts formed a bloody X. The doe's flesh was ripped apart, bones stuck out exposed and hanging chunks of flesh dangled from its ribs and were spattered in a messy circle of gore around its form.

_Blood. Blood._

Arno's nose wrinkled, he hadn't realized he was holding his breath until now. The scent of the doe's blood filled his nose. A shudder racked his body, his teeth clattered together and the shakes caused his fingers to rattle the wooden floorboard he clung to.

His fingers tore free of the grip and he slowly crawled forward on his hands and knees. Tendrils of fur, flesh, and tendon were packed underneath his fingernails. Caked blood ringed about his palms and fingers. Arno continued crawling towards the dying beast, and the growing pool of blood beneath the animal reached his hands. Arno pressed his hands against the crimson. The pale skin of his hands were coated in hot blood, Arno could feel every milimeter of blood seeping beneath his fingernails and running over his hands.

The tremors subsided for the moment. Arno continued to crawl forward towards the doe. His tattered, dirt-covered breeches now were heavy with blood at his kneecaps and all along down his shins. Once he crawled to get just beside the doe, he pushed himself up to kneel right before the opening in its side. The doe's large, black-marble like eyes stared up at him. Arno couldn't tell what its expression held.

_Fear? Pain? A cry for mercy?_

His blood-covered left hand extended and reached for the doe's face. His finger touched the side of the doe's face, and it weakly pulled its head away. Though he couldn't understand what it was feeling, he could hear the dying doe's heartbeat like thunder in his ears. Each beat came with a longer pause until the next. The heartbeat was feeble, but Arno's ears were sharp now. He heard, saw, and felt so much now. The shadows that obscured and concealed, that scared him as a child were now the only places that Arno could exist in relative peace.

_Peaceful enough that he couldn't harm people._

The doe's side rose and fell one last time, and it was still. Arno heard one final heartbeat before silence fell over the basement. His clothes and hands were sticky, his claws receded into his fingers and only a pointed tip of about an inch or so extended past the end of each finger.

A basin of blood pooled within the wound. The broken bone and ripped flesh formed a grotesque cornucopia within the doe's flank. Entrails were torn and dangled out of its meat, its heart, now still, hung in its chest. Arno slowly lowered his hands into the doe's body and his fingers sunk into the small pool of blood. A tremor ran through his body. Sharp pangs of hunger, of starvation, dug daggers into his stomach. Within the pool, Arno laced his fingers together and cupped his hands. His arms rose, a sticky pool of thick blood filled his palms. Arno brought his hands to his mouth, tilted his head back, and drank.

Pangs of hunger stabbed at Arno still. He cupped another handful of blood and drank. Sharp, body-racking pangs, cut into him as the doe's blood flowed down his throat. He tried to cup his fingers together again, but the shakes returned stronger than before. His teeth clattered together painfully, his neck was tense and his head started to shake left and right while his eyes twitched and blinked uncontrollably. Left, right, left, left, right, and so on.

_Hunger._

_Hunger._

_Blood._

Arno's head craned back and he stared up at the ceiling. His jaw opened wide and he let out a soundless scream at the heavens. All the while his legs spasmed, his torso writhed and blood splashed out towards the walls, the occasional meaty thud of Arno's leg smacking against the dead doe echoed in his skull.

Hot knives pierced every inch of his body. Arno gasped and looked down. He was covered in blood. So much blood. His hands, his mouth, his clothes, his insides were drowning in blood like a balloon. One of those hot knives buried itself directly into his sternum, and then started carving downwards. Arno felt hot blood spill out from the open wound. He was being torn open, cut wide like the doe. Streams of blood stemmed from his body, forming a steady river of dark sanguine mixed with bright crimson. He wouldn't stop bleeding. No matter how much his hands covered the wound or tried to stop the phantom knife that was cutting him open. Arno pressed his hands where the knife had cut open. Blood. So much blood. His own blood now. All around him, Arno could feel water rising, covering his legs, his waist, then inching and sloshing upward towards his shoulders.

He looked around, and the rising water level was actually blood. He continued to bleed, and the blood level continued to rise. Hot, sticky liquid reached his neck. He was going to drown. Drowning in blood.

Death. At least he wouldn't have to feel this hunger then.

Once his head was completely submerged, Arno's eyes blinked open and his entire body shook again. His eyes flicked to the left and right, and all he could see was pink-red flesh, veins bled dry. He slowly rose his head and saw his hands beneath him, buried and ripping deep into the doe's flesh. Arno gasped, and pushed away and pulled his head backwards.

The back of Arno's head hit the ground and his already sticky hair splashed into the pool of blood around him. His body curled into itself, his claws were out now and he pressed those sharp points against his stomach. He looked up and saw that the open wound in the doe's side was massive now. Its guts were ripped and pulled aside, its heart cut open, the level of blood within it overflowed from the gory cornucopia and spilled out onto the ground.

While his mind drowned, his body was forcing itself into the doe.

The realization made Arno dry-heave. Each cough and shudder of his body pressed his face harder against the ground, splattering blood against his cheeks, his nose, his eyes, against his tongue and coating his teeth.

"I'm a monster," Arno sputtered to himself.

"Monster," He repeated.

"Monster."

"Monster."

"Monster," Arno heard the word again, though it wasn't his tongue that spoke it.

"Monster, Monster, Monster!" The voices blasted in from every corner of the small basement.

Arno's head whipped about. He stared into the corners of the basement. Though there was no light in the basement, he could see clearly.

But he didn't see a single soul, there was no origin of that damning, judgmental voice.

"Monster! You're a Monster!"

The shouts were so loud. He heard voices of men, women, and children in the vicious cacophony. The shouts seemed to be pressing against every inch of Arno's curled up body.

Squeezing him, "MONSTER!"

Strangling him, "MONSTER!"

Killing him, "MONSTER!"

"Leave monster!" Arno recognized that voice.

He pulled his hands away from his eyes. He could feel thin trails of blood beginning to seep down his skin from where his claws had pricked his face.  
  
"Leave monster!" The voice said again.

Arno turned his head towards the voice, and he saw his father. His father's clothes were torn and bloody, in his hand he held a torch which he waved threateningly in Arno's direction with each shout.

"Leave monster! You bloody demon from hell! Leave my fucking family alone!"

That was what his father said to him on that night sixty-three years ago. When the monsters from the Noosewood came. When Arno turned.

"I-"

"Leave monster!" His father waved the torch at Arno again, this time mere inches away from his face, the heat from the torch was immense.

As the torch was swung again, Arno could see shapes behind his father. He saw the inside of his home. He saw the overturned table, the smashed chairs, the broken window. And he saw corpses. He saw his sisters, he saw his mother. Their bodies were cut up beyond recognition from the neck down, all that remained were torn chunks of flesh and exposed bone in a meat-mush of human flesh. But their faces were untouched. They were laid on the floor in a line, each with their heads turned to face Arno.

Arno looked up at his father again, and now he saw the same brutality on his body. His arms dangled from barely connected tendons. Bone jutted through his skin from his knees, elbows, and shoulders. Claw marks ran down his arms and chest, straight down the center of his face and in a jagged diagonals down his legs.

Blood, so much blood, like a fountain, continuously and impossibly streamed out of his father's body.

"LEAVE MONSTER!" He shouted, his tongue was torn in half and the severed portion jumped about within his mouth, blood poured out from between his teeth with each word he spoke.

"YOU ALREADY KILLED US ALL! YOU KILLED YOUR FAMILY, MONSTER!"

Arno scrambled backwards. The corpses of his sisters and mother rose from the ground. Their limbs moved in unnerving manners, scarecrow-like, while other portions of their bodies fell off them and hit the ground. But they advanced, they stood four abreast beside his father and walked towards Arno.

"You killed us, Monster! You killed us, Monster!" They repeated, over and over.

"N-no, I-I didn't, I-I didn't kill you!" Arno shouted back, his voice cracking and his throat suddenly feeling raw as sand, even with all the blood he drank.

"YOU KILLED US!"

_No. No. I didn't kill them. I protected them, I--_

_Did I kill them?_

Arno's mind swam. Doubt filled over his thoughts like a think ink. He protected them. He protected them? Did he? How did they die then? Did I let them die?

_Did I kill them?_

Arno pressed his squeezed his skull between his hands.

_Why can't I remember? Why can't I remember? I was there. I was there for each of them. I was there for each of them when they died?_

_Did I kill them?_

His family was closing on him now. He could see their faces. His heart was shredded by their mere presence, their faces were just as he remembered them. Even with their ugly shouting, even with their brutalized bodies, he missed them.

_Did I kill them?_

Arno's hands slipped down from the sides of his head. His fingers pressed against his lips.

_It would have been so easy. It would have been so easy to kill them._

Arno's teeth parted and he bit down on his fingers. He could feel his claws cutting into the inside of his cheeks and his jaw.

_Why would I kill them? Why did I kill them?_

His teeth bit down harder, his fangs pierced through his skin and blood began to stream down his jaw, and inside of his mouth.

_For blood. I killed them for blood._

Arno's father was now just a pace away from him. His mother and sisters crowded him in a semi-circle while Arno sat with his back pressed against the wall. His father brought the torch up, then swung it down at Arno's head. Just before the searing heat made contact with Arno's head, he blinked again.

He was back in the center of the basement. The doe's corpse beside him. His hands were in his mouth. Sharp pinpricks of pain covered his fingers and the inside of his cheeks. Painfully, Arno pushed himself off of the ground and looked around the basement.

Empty wooden crates, a rickety table, a couple of hunters tools, that was all he saw. The same emptiness was around him. He was still alone.

Arno looked down at his hands. His blood dripped down from the corners of his mouth, and he watched as the cuts in his fingers from where his fangs tore into his skin slowly restitched themselves and his flesh closed up.

He was alone. It was quiet. He was alone, covered in blood, hungry, and alone. He was alone. He was a monster. Arno looked around again, the darkness parted for his vision, and he couldn't even pretend that something or someone lurked in the dark corners of the basement. He saw it all, and he was alone.

Arno rose both his hands and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes.

Then he began to cry.


End file.
